It is more than 70 years since the World War II ended. Finland suffered great losses but managed to get on her feets again.

During the war the German soldiers fought against the Russians in Lapland. But things changed as it started to seem like Finland would loose the war. The Germans had to withdraw from Northern Finland. While moving back they burned everything. They burned houses and barn houses, and they blew up bridges, railroads and roads.

The disaster was total. But one village was lucky. That village is called Suvanto, and it is situated by the river Kitinen. The whole village remained intact.

No one knows why or what happened. How come the Germans left this small village in peace while they burned almost everything else in Lapland?

Today Suvanto is under the protection of Finnish National Board of Antiques and it is categorized as a cultural environment. There are about 30 people who live in the village year around. In summer time the amount of inhabitants grows when people come to visit their old homes, relatives and summer cottages.

The village also attracts tourists because of it’s beautiful old log houses that were built before the war. The oldest one is from the 1800th century. Some houses still have shingle roof.

To keep the village alive and buildings in good shape, voluntary work has been organized. People can for example take part in restoring the roofs and fences and learn how things were done in the old days.

The last effort was to save the old ferry and it’s shelter in 2015. The ferry was in use during the years 1960–1975, then came a new ferry with an engine and later, in 1991, a new bridge was opened over the river Kitinen.

The ferry was moved in dock and at the same time into history. The dock is located on the opposite bank of river Kitinen and is free to visit.

Suvanto is also popular with artists and photographers and some art courses are arranged there during summers.

Visitors may rent a cottage from the village or nearby, have a cup of coffee in cozy café (check opening hours) or just walk around and admire the view and the colorful houses. A perfect place for a day trip.

http://finlandnaturally.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/suvanto-13.jpg6831028Tytti Tuominenhttp://finlandnaturally.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/finlandnaturally-logo.pngTytti Tuominen2016-09-29 13:24:222018-11-07 13:48:46Suvanto, a historical village in Lapland that did not burn

Autumn had arrived to Finland with it’s colorful touch. It was time to get together and spend a night outside.

Suomen Latu Ry (a Finnish outdoor association) has decided a date for Finns to spend a night outside. The 17th of September is the day that thousands of Finns will be heading to the forests every year for an overnighter, or they will camp on their own backyard etc.

So I asked if someone from our Finnish hammock group wished to get together and go hanging somewhere. Soon we had decided our destination: the Riuttaskorpi recreational forest.

Haukijärvi

Riuttaskorpi is a 16 sq km area in the north side of Ylöjärvi, near Kuru. It locates between 2 big national parks, Seitseminen and Helvetinjärvi.

This area hasn’t had much of population during it’s history. Mostly it is known for log floating and some of it’s white waters have been used for mills.

Some of Finland’s long trails go through this area, like Pirkan Taival for example. There is a lean-to and a few fireplaces, and also a sightseeing tower, which is closed now because of it’s poor rotten condition. One rented sauna can be found by the lake Haukijärvi, and next to the sauna there’s a kitchen building which is open for everybody.

Parts of Riuttaskorpi log trails are also in poor condition, I hope the rotten logs will be replaced soon. There is a total of 15 km of trails to walk.

The day started from my home, where 3 of us met at 10 am. Unfortunately, one had to cancel, because his child got really sick and they had had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.

It took about an hour to drive to the Myllykoski parking lot, where there were two more hammock hikers waiting for us.

Our first destination was only 500 meters away. It was the Suutarilankoski lean-to with it’s white waters.

Remains of an old mill

Suutarilankoski is a beautiful place. One can still see some remains of the old mills from the 1920’s, or possibly even earlier. There wasn’t as much of water running as usual, I think, since this small river is sometimes also used for canoeing and kayaking.

There was a small trail on the right bank, where we could access easier to the small flowing river. I jumped from rock to rock in the middle of the purling waters. Yellow leaves gave extra colors to the beautiful green moss around. I enjoyed the sound of purling water by closing my eyes.

It was a bit of a disappointment that we couldn’t use the sightseeing tower because of it’s poor condition. Parts of the stairs had been removed so that people wouldn’t go up and possibly get hurt.

But there was quite a nice view from the rocks to the lake as well, even if we couldn’t go up in the tower.

We also got a few deer keds on our way… I hate those. Hard to kill because they have such a strong armor, and they are really small insects. Crawling under the shirt and in the hair… nasty little… well, you know. They appear usually in the August and their season lasts around the end of September.

Haukikalliot

It didn’t take long before we arrived to Haukikalliot (the Pike Rocks) and had a conversation whether this could be our place for the night or not.

We had some snacks and soon we decided to check out the last place by the lake Haukijärvi (Pike lake). If it wasn’t a good place for us, we would come back here. We had lot’s of time, since it was only 12.30 pm.

A table had collapsed due to it’s poor condition

Most of the logs in the trail were in bad shape as I mentioned earlier. Also the table up on the hill had collapsed because the wood was too soft and rotten. But the trails were mostly in good condition, luckily.

Kitchen building

Man cave, 3 x knock

Salinkalliot has an kitchen building with a fireplace and two big tables. It is a really nice cottage, but I forgot to take photos inside!

There was only a sauna down on the shore and no camping possibilities for all of us, so we decided to head back to Haukikalliot.

We set our hammocks and made a fire. We also made enough firewood for the whole night and for the next morning too.

Me and Jani decided to not use the tarps, since it was obvious that it wouldn’t be raining at all. The weather forecast told us that the night would be clear, but the temperature would be around 0 celcius (32F).

There wasn’t any grid available so this worked out well too…

We had a great evening! We chatted and made something to eat. Also some other people joined us and since they didn’t have much of experience with hammocks, we showed them some of our own solutions with our hammocks and tarps. Hammock camping is a relatively new thing here in Finland.

The gear we had was this: 1 DD Frontline, 2 Ticket To The Moon’s, 1 Amazonas and 2 Warbonnet Blackbird XLC’s. Mostly DD Underquilts, since we don’t have other options here available…

A friend of mine has a Warbonnet Wooki down underquilt, which he ordered for over a month ago. It cost around 85$ more in Finland because of the taxes and duty. Wish to get mine someday too.

Around 8 pm the sun was starting to set. The weather was really calm, no wind at all. The lake reflected the sky and it’s clouds perfectly. It was also very quiet, only sometimes I could hear some distant traffic noises from the roads far away.

I was really waiting for the night to fall, since I wanted to take some long exposure shots.